Show Love To Someone Who Probably Won’t Appreciate Or Reciprocate It

In just over weeks a time, we’ll all be bidding our final farewells to October 2013. 😥
But just because the month is drawing to a close, it doesn’t mean that operation #Getcomfortablebeinguncomfortable has to come to an end….

Yes, you may not get to experience the excitement that comes with finding out what the new challenge is each week, but that’s no reason to let it stop here! I can assure you that everyday will be full of opportunities that present you with the choice to either lapse back into the routine of your comfort zone or bear the brunt of some temporary discomfort, that will ultimately help you to achieve your goals, overcome your fears and become more of a risk taker.

Today marks the final challenge from the #Getcomfortablebeinguncomfortable campaign and what a month it has been! From striking up conversation with strangers to asking for the seemingly impossible to practicing real forgiveness, it’s been an amazing period of growth for me – on all fronts. And I really do hope that taking part in the challenges has been worthwhile for you guys too.

It would be foolish of me to end the campaign without congratulating everybody who has participated in #Getcomfortablebeinguncomfortable. Whether you’ve stuck it out from week one or you’re joining us in week four, at the final hurdle, I want to personally celebrate you, your efforts and your bravery for stepping out! Well done!

Now I know a lot of you are probably thinking “what the heck is she on?!”, but I’m deadly serious about this challenge guys. I know it sounds illogical, bizarre and let’s face it straight up uncomfortable (pun intended), but that’s the whole point!

From the standpoint of someone who conforms to the ideals and subscribes to the standards of mainstream/popular culture, the idea of loving on someone who will most probably respond with indifference or disinterest is just wild. And quite frankly unheard of.

And that’s no surprise, because we live in a world where the dominant culture teaches us to‘give and expect something in return’ and to only ‘love those who love you.’Giving and loving because it is good and godly, are very alien concepts to the vast majority of people. And that’s where the real challenge lies.

The truth is, I honestly don’t think that people realise how unbiblical it is not to show love to the unlovable. And by the term unlovable, I mean the difficult, unfriendly and ungrateful folk that reside among us. We’ve been so deeply saturated by this ‘give to get, love me first and I’ll love you back’ mentality that we’re not really bothered about finding out what God’s take on all of this is.

Well God has a pretty strong stance on this subject and He communicates it to us through Luke in chapter six verses 32-33;

“If you only love those who love you, why should you get credit for that? Even sinners love those who love them! And if you do good only to those who do good to you, why should you get credit? Even sinners do that much!”

It’s not by any means supposed to be easy. I’ll even go as far as saying that if you always find it easy to sincerely show love to the unlovable people in your life, then you’re not doing it right lolz!

This task is going to be a toughie for all of us, but it’s oh so necessary. After loving God, loving others as we love ourselves is the most important aspect of our faith walk. So please, whatever you do, do not trivialise this challenge. If anything, take it seriously. People are important to God. Not because of what they have or what they’ve done, but because He places an extremely high value on people, especially their hearts, and we MUST follow suit.

Luke 6:36 sums it up perfectly; “You must be compassionate, just as your Father is compassionate.”

So now it’s left to you and I to be intentional. There are people in our lives who are grumpy and who grind our gears on a daily basis. There are also people in our lives, who are not always very pleasant to be around. People that we know well. People that we live with. People that we work with. People that we serve and minister with (yep, I went there). People in our families. People on our commutes. People in our neighbourhoods. These are the people that we have to first identify and pray for and then reach out to, in genuine and practical Christlike LOVE. Expecting nothing in return.

I won’t even front. It’s a bit of a tall order. But it’s definitely doable, because if Christ did it, so can we.

Once again, feel free to fill me in and let me know how it goes. The good, the bad and the ugly. Let’s encourage one another and share our experiences in the comments section below.